Author Archives: Schooner Mahdee

Propeller ordered and timeline

Posted on by under Systems

Well, now we’ve got our “earliest” back in the water date…sometime in late June. That was already our earliest expected time to get back in the water but our propeller order pretty much cinches it up to be late June.

With the tight aperture of the keel-hung rudder we didn’t really have fore-to-aft space for one of the adjustable pitch props (like Max- or J-prop) so we focused on getting an efficient fixed pitch 3 blade propeller for Mahdee. As it is, the propeller hub will be custom cast 1.25″ thinner than the “standard” hub for our 1-3/4″ shaft. This, along with cutting off 1″ of the stern bearing (we only need 5″ bearing surface and we’ve got 7″ so we’ll be down to 6″ with that cut) will give us a whopping 3/8″ clearance when we’re removing the propeller from the boat (without removing the very difficult to remove rudder).

Our decision was the Campbell Sailor. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that we made a good decision. The design is known to be good in full keel boats like Mahdee; in particular the Campbell Sailor is helpful when the boat is in reverse (reduced prop-walk). We’ll let you know how it goes once we’re in the water. Link to Campbell Sailor Prop

Catch up? Maybe not

Posted on by under misc

Its a “catch up” week for me. While David works on engine-related things and John continues his fairing work, I’m doing the calls (to find out where the back-ordered parts may be) and the running around (to pick up misc stuff) as well as the logistics of coordinating between the shop making the prop shaft and the one making the propeller. That one’s a bit tricky–our prop aperture is a bit tight front-to-back and in order to be able to remove the propeller without removing the rudder, a prop with thinner hub must be used. If everything goes just peachy, we’ll have 1/4″ clearance between the prop hub and the rudder stock as the hub comes off the shaft. The good news–we’re unlikely to lose our prop by accident while underway sailing!

I’m feeling “behind” a bit in this week’s errands because yesterday David and I spent what ended up being the whole day getting Stargazer situated with her new owners. At 10 am, we left Mahdee for our Stargazer “pass off.” We ran over to the storage unit to get the extra sails; picked up the new owners when they got into town (they’re from Northern California); pulled Stargazer in off her mooring and removed last bits of stuff from her (cleaning supplies mostly); went over all her systems with the new owners; went for an evening sail with the new owners (a couple) and her dad (who also flew in from out of town to see the boat); took Stargazer back out to the mooring at 10 pm. Stargazer remains on the mooring for two or three more weeks at which time the new owners will move her to another marina. As we canoed back to shore, I felt a little sad that this particular part of our San Diego adventure was over.

Today, the excitement is that Mahdee’s mooring will be ready for her at the end of the month! Of course, Mahdee still has a huge number of things that must be completed before SHE is ready! But, we’re excited. And, until Mahdee is in the water and rigged, as far as sailing goes…we’ll have to pull out Mahdee’s tender: a little Tinker Traveler (dingy with sail kit) and explore Mission Bay on the weekends.

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